WPR14CA136 · Norman QUAD CITY CHALLENGER II
Norman QUAD CITY CHALLENGER II · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure during initial climb
From First Air Field (W16) to First Air Field (W16)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14CA136
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Norman QUAD CITY CHALLENGER II
- Aircraft type
- Norman QUAD CITY CHALLENGER
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N345MN
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From First Air Field (W16), Monroe, WATo First Air Field (W16), Monroe, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 2000)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Initial climb
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Flight control system malfunction/failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft propeller/rotor
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, who was also the builder of the experimental pusher-configured airplane, stated that he made a normal departure from his base airport. As the airplane reached about 250 feet above ground level (agl) he transitioned from the best-angle of climb configuration to the best-rate of climb configuration. The airplane emitted a loud "bang" behind the pilot and the engine subsequently experienced a total loss of power. He established a shallow turn back toward the airport and landed in a field just south and adjacent to the runway. The airplane touched down in soft, wet grass and the right main landing gear collapsed. The fuselage was substantially damaged.
After egressing the airplane, the pilot noted that the propeller had separated from the airplane. Upon closer examination, he discovered that the metal bracket he had constructed to support the propeller as part of the speed reduction system had fractured. He estimated that the bracket had amassed about 10 hours of flight time on it.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate construction of the propeller bracket, which resulted in its failure during the initial climb and the propeller subsequently departing the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14CA136
- Event ID
- 20140317X90512
- Case number
- WPR14CA136
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2014-03-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 585e2a69d4fbb591ad17bd58bb894ba05a655049c14847594baf9e1f964a5c00; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:24:11.816Z.